TY - JOUR

T1 - Negated tautologies and copular contradictions Interpretive strategies

AU - Escandell-Vidal, Victoria

AU - Vilinbakhova, Elena

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2019/5

Y1 - 2019/5

N2 - This paper investigates utterances with the structure A is not A, showing that they can be fully informative and are felicitously used and understood in discourse. Relying on the notions of metalinguistic and metarepresentational negation, we argue that the class of utterances A is not A is heterogeneous and differs in regard to the lower-order representation under the scope of the negative operator. Specifically, we distinguish negated tautologies and copular contradictions. The understanding of negated tautologies involves identifying the corresponding affirmative deep tautology (Bulhof & Gimbel, 2001) and rejecting the assumptions derived from it. The interpretation of copular contradictions is based on distinguishing each of the occurrences of the repeated constituent as describing (a) one single referent with different properties; (b) two different referents satisfying the same description in different evaluation worlds; (c) two different referents, with different properties, which are accessed by means of the same linguistic expression.

AB - This paper investigates utterances with the structure A is not A, showing that they can be fully informative and are felicitously used and understood in discourse. Relying on the notions of metalinguistic and metarepresentational negation, we argue that the class of utterances A is not A is heterogeneous and differs in regard to the lower-order representation under the scope of the negative operator. Specifically, we distinguish negated tautologies and copular contradictions. The understanding of negated tautologies involves identifying the corresponding affirmative deep tautology (Bulhof & Gimbel, 2001) and rejecting the assumptions derived from it. The interpretation of copular contradictions is based on distinguishing each of the occurrences of the repeated constituent as describing (a) one single referent with different properties; (b) two different referents satisfying the same description in different evaluation worlds; (c) two different referents, with different properties, which are accessed by means of the same linguistic expression.

KW - contradictions

KW - metalinguistic negation

KW - metarepresentation

KW - tautologies

KW - METALINGUISTIC NEGATION

KW - BOYS WILL

KW - CONSTRUCTIONS

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106829018&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1163/18773109-01102100

DO - 10.1163/18773109-01102100

M3 - Review article

AN - SCOPUS:85106829018

VL - 11

SP - 153

EP - 199

JO - International Review of Pragmatics

JF - International Review of Pragmatics

SN - 1877-3109

IS - 2

ER -